Deceit: BBW Alien Lottery Romance (Chosen by the Karal Book 1) Read online

  “Oh my goodness, that’s him,” Reja said, almost overcome with desire for the tall, dark-haired Karalian approaching them. The glare from flashing cameras hardly seemed to faze him. At least from the look on his face, but a spark of colour crossed his skin, making Reja gasp in near euphoria. “Oh my goodness,” she breathed again.

  Elissa searched through the crowd of faces for the paramedics, her hands really beginning to throb now. But there was nothing, no sign of blue lights, only the flashes from the paps as they all vied to get the first contact between the lottery winner and her prize.

  “Come on, sweetheart, give him a kiss,” someone shouted from the crowd.

  “You’ll be doing a bit more than that soon, love. If I give you my card, will you give me an exclusive on what it’s like to be fucked by a creature from another planet?”

  Elissa looked at the alien in front of her, who, despite his hard-toned physique, looked like a hunted animal. For the first time she saw the human race through his eyes. They must seem like a baying mob, all after a piece of the action, selfish and uncaring.

  He took a step towards her, and then he saw her hands, still wrapped in the ragged towels from her apartment. “You are hurt. You need attention.”

  “We called the paramedics,” Reja said, sidling up next to him, for now forgetting that Elissa was hurt and in need of help. Her eyes had widened and she couldn’t help but reach out and touch him. Colour skimmed his face, reds and blues, as if waves were washing under his skin. His face hardened, and he returned to the neutral flesh colour they normally assumed.

  Despite her sore hands, and her distrust of the Karalians, she had to admit a faint fascination awakening inside her. She was an educated scientist, yes; she concentrated on the regeneration of the planet, examining how they were supposed to feed a population of ten billion and more, but he was still something she would love to study. To find out all the ways they were the same, and all the ways they were different.

  “Elissa.” He said her name; it made her feel beautiful. Damn, she would have to watch herself, their innate ability to charm anyone they talked to seemed to be taking ahold of her already. She had to find a way to keep her mind her own. She would need to stock up on SimCoff before she left. It was rumoured to stimulate the brain just enough to ward them off; it was why she had become addicted to the stuff.

  “I need a doctor,” she said bluntly, not really feeling up to a whole photo shoot at this moment.

  “Here, we can go in my space cruiser.” His cruiser was multi-purpose, it could drive like a car, hover over water and fly into space. She had seen it on one of those documentaries about the Karalians, which were always on the Stream. Most of it computer generated, filled with unsubstantiated theories; the Karal kept their planet’s coordinates secret and their technology closely guarded.

  Right now, this alien looked as if he longed to get into his cruiser, take off into space, and run home to his own planet. However, he had to play out his part in this infernal sham of a lottery, they both did. So instead, he moved towards his cruiser, walking backwards to check they were following. Although there was no stopping Reja and Tikki, they practically ran after him, leaving her forgotten. Yes, she would have to be careful of the charm he would lay on humans so thickly, or she would be his to manipulate and question until she spilled all of her secrets.

  She knew she had to object to going with him in his cruiser. Elissa needed time to get her thoughts together and formulate a plan. To do what? She had sworn never to get involved in the resistance again. She would have to go along with her new life. However, she would do it on her own timetable.

  “No. I want to wait for the paramedics.” This outburst signalled another round of camera flashes. Elissa could just imagine the front pages of the news streams tomorrow. This picture would flash up on the illuminated billboards with the headline “Lottery winner loses out in love” or something equally ridiculous. “It’s just, the paramedics are already on their way.”

  “They aren’t here, though, Elissa. And his cruiser is,” Tikki said, pointing at the Karalian. Coming back to Elissa, she pretended to help her. Then she whispered in her ear. “Look, I have lost out on being the one to go to the planet. Will you at least let me have a ride in his god-damn spaceship? At least this way I might get to sell my story and get out of this hovel we live in.”

  “Tikki, I’m sorry.” Elissa knew how much this meant to her sister.

  “It’s OK. It’s not exactly your fault, is it? But count this as a consolation prize, or a going-away gift. Maybe I might meet one of them myself and he might fall for me.”

  “That would only happen if they had emotions.”

  “They do, didn’t you see the way the colour swept over his skin?” Tikki was awestruck; he might have been a StreamStar, rather than an alien, by the way she acted.

  “They have reactions, not emotions, never forget that,” Elissa warned.

  “You sound like Harri. He corrupted you, you know that?” Although Tikki had only met Harri, Elissa’s ex-boyfriend once, he had left an overwhelming impression on her. Not hard when his views on the aliens were filled with hard-line rhetoric against the Karal, while Tikki wanted to fall in love with everything about them. Tikki had taken an instant dislike to Harri for this very reason, and so the sisters had kept apart for months.

  Tikki however, had made a good judgement call. Harri had proved dangerous and Elissa had spent the last few months trying to forget everything about him and his views. Right now, the mention of Harri’s name was enough to make her move forward towards the cruiser. Anything to stop Tikki discussing Elissa’s ex-boyfriend here in front of hundreds of reporters, no doubt armed with the latest listening equipment.

  As she went the short distance to the cruiser, she convinced herself there wasn’t much about Earth she would miss. Except for the sunsets over the sea. But the people... Not so much. She had only a few close friends, and Tikki of course, but the rest of the population, she sometimes wondered why she worked to save them at all.

  It was a crowded place, and they mined and farmed the world to death. In some ways the planet reminded her of herself since that fateful day when she became a mass murderer. Empty and shallow, no longer of any use.

  “Elissa,” Tikki said, bringing her back to the present. “Are you OK?”

  Elissa looked down at her hands, the pain was getting worse and the constant flashing of cameras made her disoriented. Trying to pull herself together, she stepped forward falteringly. The morphalite had entered her blood stream, affecting her heart rate and leaving her with palpitations. She had the intense need to sit down, right here in the middle of the lottery circus.

  Somewhere, there was a space ship she was supposed to get on. She started to giggle, that was the most ridiculous thing in the world. That she, one of the people who had been behind the resistance for so many months, was now going to get on one of their cruisers so that he could take her to the hospital. What was the point, they were only going to kill her anyway. So why not do it now?

  Behind her, there were calls of, “What’s wrong, Elissa? Changed your mind?”

  She knew she should turn around and tell them that she had never entered the lottery and that the whole thing had been a setup. It was the only way to save her own skin. Yet just as she was about to do that, the dark shadow of the cruiser lit up, and she could just make out the silhouettes of Tikki and Reja going up the shallow ramp and disappearing into the belly of the small craft.

  She needed to go, to make sure they were safe and they weren’t about to be held responsible for her crimes. But her legs had pins and needles and they were refusing to work. Damn, she was falling apart, and falling down. Yes, the ground was definitely getting closer.

  Then something wrapped itself around her, lifted her off the ground and carried her forward. Elissa couldn’t focus properly, but she could see enough to know who had rescued her from hitting the ground. The Karalian was cradling her against him, her curvy b
ody resting against his hard-toned chest.

  “Put me down,” she said as he began to move towards the ship.

  “No.”

  “I can walk.”

  “With the condition you are in, you will not even be able to crawl into my ship.” His voice was level, but held a hint of accusation.

  Chapter Four – Marin

  He had never had any feelings for humans. They were destructive and selfish. A view held by the majority of his species. The one thing they were any good for was breeding. It was the only reason he had gone along with the need to find a way to rejuvenate their world, although that was looking more and more impossible.

  When they chose him to be the first Karalian to take a mate from this overpopulated world, he had been horrified. What did he want with one of these women? Only the consolation that once he had put his child in her belly she would be taken to the breeding centre consoled him. Then, when the child was born, it would be raised by his species while she was given to another Karalian so that their DNA would gain diversity.

  This last part was never disclosed to the people of Earth. By the time the nine months incubation was complete and his child was born, they would either have found a way to help the Earth, and be seen as saviours, who were more than entitled to a hundred thousand breeding females as payment, or they would have sent their warriors down and taken the prime breeding females for themselves. The wormhole would be closed and the sorry planet would be left to become barren.

  All this was before he had held this woman in his arms. She had brought a change in him; the touch of her skin on his had awakened the primal need to procreate. And he hated her for it. Hated the way he felt as if he needed to nurture her, protect her, and provide for her. Those were feelings he only wanted for the child they would produce.

  Worse, he could feel his emotions covering his skin, flashes of colours he could not control as his feelings toward her did battle. He felt useless and out of control. A thing the Karalians had never had to cope with before. They lived long, and the mating cycle was something they only had to deal with every century or so as the current wave of their species reached their prime. They would breed, raise the next generation, and then die in sixty years or so.

  It was the way their life cycle worked. This meant there was never any overcrowding on their beloved planet. They lived and bred within their means. Unlike these humans.

  She must carry some kind of hormone that made him feel like this. He was beginning to understand why they bred so indiscriminately. The scent of their women produced the need to mate. A need for sexual satisfaction, whilst the Karalians were raised to only mate when the need for the new generation arose. He could see why females were always isolated on his planet and only allowed to be within the population when they were needed to breed.

  In short, this woman was a drug, and he was about to become addicted.

  “You can put me down now,” she said, her words breaking through his reverie.

  He did, almost dropping her, a hot rock that would burn him if he held it too long. Already he felt as though she had branded him with her touch. Yet, when she stumbled forward at the abruptness of his actions, he found himself reaching out to save her once more.

  She shrugged him off, instead placing her hand on the smooth wall of the cruiser to regain her balance.

  “So are you going to shut the door and take off?” one of the other females asked excitedly.

  “Of course.” He watched his female, the one called Elissa, as she let the pain show on her face once she thought he was no longer watching her. She had no idea he didn’t need to watch her face to see her emotions; they spread out like waves from her body.

  He picked up these waves on his skin, the hairs on his arms working like small receptors to translate these messages to his brain. At this moment, Elissa, the woman responsible for the death of two Karalians, was terrified. Yet in amongst this terror, a strong thread of deceit ran. She was hiding something, and as he sat at his controls, readying his ship to fly, he realised the Hierarchy were wise to pluck her from the Earth.

  She would need to be dealt with appropriately so that she never became a threat to their species again. Maybe it was an ironic fate that she would be used to breed more of the very species she wanted to destroy. He only hoped that when the time came, he would have the strength to give her up.

  Chapter Five – Elissa

  How had this happened? That was the only thought going through her head as she sat, tightly strapped into a seat. She felt the downward pull as the ship prepared to hurtle them straight into the air, and closed her eyes tight. She had never even experienced air travel before, so why would she ever want to go in one of these death traps? Travelling at anything above twenty miles an hour was just wrong to her.

  Elissa liked the way the average speed on Earth had dropped due to fuel shortages and congestion. Compound that with the belief that if they were meant to leave the ground, they would have evolved with wings like those, now-extinct, birds used to have, she felt wrong. But then she was in an alien craft, with an alien—of course it was wrong.

  She groaned inwardly. The ship shot straight up into the air, leaving more than her stomach on the ground, and all around her Tikki and Reja whooped for all they were worth. Maybe she should try swapping places with Tikki. This Karalian hadn’t asked her what her name was; maybe Tikki could fool him. Or maybe he would prefer the fun-loving Tikki as his mate and go along with the deception. But then Tikki would be in danger. Elissa knew she would have to find the courage to endure space travel, and to pay the price for her crimes.

  In seconds, they were going back down to Earth, and if her hands weren’t hurting so much, she would have been gripping the arms of her seat. Instead, she held them close to her chest, cradling herself for comfort. Damn, she was a wimp; the aliens would bend her to their will in no time.

  The ship landed safely, and Tikki and Reja were out of their seats, heading for the control deck to flirt with the Karalian. Elissa wondered, when he opened the door of the ship, whether she would be better to just run for it. She could escape into the pits and live out her days underground. The tunnels went on for miles; they would never find her.

  Yet, as the exit deck opened, she finally understood there would be no escape. Because here, in more numbers than outside her apartment building, were the StreamTeams. She recognised some of the more famous Streamers, their cameras and microphones ready. Elissa wanted to run to the Karalian and tell him to take her straight to his planet now; she didn’t even need to pack.

  A fresh wave of panic came over her, and in an instant, the Karalian was at her side. “Are you going to faint?”

  “No. I just need a minute.” She lowered her head between her knees, and took deep breaths, trying to let the blood flow back into her brain.

  “She gets like this. No good at travelling,” said Tikki. The two women had come back from the control deck, looking a little upset that the Karalian had deserted them.

  “So why did you enter the lottery?” he asked, and it was such a reasonable question, but she couldn’t tell the truth. She was sure in the terms and conditions of the lottery, there would be a big paragraph detailing the punishments for fraud. She couldn’t do that to her sister.

  “I guess I never expected to win,” she said—well, that was the truth—but then she added, “And everyone else was doing it, so I thought why not?”

  Did she sound like the dumbest female ever? She would probably be rejected at customs when they landed on the planet Karal for being too dumb to be the mother of a Karalian child. She swallowed, suddenly feeling a wave of nausea about to hit her. There was no way she wanted to puke on camera, not in front of the whole world. Damn, she wished she could restart this day.

  But he was there once more, offering her some kind of stimulant. But she didn’t want it. Not from him. “I’m fine.”

  “It will stop the sickness. I think it would be best if we walked off the ship together. And a
lone.” He looked pointedly at Tikki and Reja, and then said, “This is supposed to bring our people together.”

  “So you can look like the big hero?” Elissa asked acidly. She must be feeling better.

  “No. I think the fact that you tried to slit your wrists to prevent you being my mate might dampen my hero status.”

  Elissa opened her mouth but found no words. It was Tikki who stepped in and spoke. “She spilt hot SimCoff on her hands. The shock of winning, you know.”

  He looked at Tikki, staring at her for a few minutes, the colour flashing across his skin now blue. “Very well, I believe you. It was just not as I expected.”

  “That makes two of us,” Elissa said.

  Again, that pause while he seemed to process her words. “Very well.”

  She stood up and walked towards the waiting Streamers. “Wait, how did they know we were coming here?”

  “They track my ship. I have to submit a destination before I can take off. Although, still, it was quick.”

  “I bet the transponder picked up your name when I Tabbed in the emergency too. I guess that was why the paramedics were delayed; someone wanted to make sure there was enough time for the paps to be here before you arrived.”

  “Damn it, I can’t believe I have to take part in this media circus.” When she looked up at the Karalian, she saw his face read the same expression and the colour of his skin had changed to grey. If he was a man, his looks and body would have made him sought-after on Earth; he would have earned millions and been in one of those pents that Tikki liked to drool over. It would have made him corrupt and so self-assured he would never have even lowered himself to speak to three ‘skims’. Instead, he fitted right in with them; he was anxious and nervous of their trial by camera.

  Elissa found herself warming to him and in some ways feeling sorry for him; maybe the idea of all this was almost as abhorrent to him as it was to her. Why had he been chosen, or was he a volunteer? All this time she thought they did not experience feelings and emotions, but in the few short minutes she had been in his company she realised that this was not true. They were simply good at concealing them. Perhaps she would fit in better with the Karalians than she ever did with the people on Earth. Elissa was the queen of covering up her true emotions; it was the reason no one thought she knew how to smile.